oomctl

Oomctl is a command line tool used for managing the Out of Memory (OOM) killer in a Linux system. It allows administrators to control the behavior of the OOM killer when the system runs out of available memory. Using oomctl, you can configure parameters that determine how the OOM killer selects and kills processes.

The tool provides options to set policies like oom_score_adj, which is used to influence the score given to a process when calculating its OOM score. A higher oom_score_adj value means the process is less likely to be killed by the OOM killer.

Oomctl also allows you to set the badness percentage, which determines the relative importance of a process in terms of memory allocation. Higher badness values increase the chances of a process being selected by the OOM killer.

Additionally, oomctl provides the ability to disable the OOM killer entirely, which can be useful in special cases where specific processes should never be killed, even if memory becomes critically low.

By providing these control options, oomctl helps administrators fine-tune the memory management behavior of a Linux system to prioritize critical processes and prevent undesirable or unexpected terminations during memory pressure situations.